Personalized information structures
Scott Tilley, Michael J. Whitney, Hausi A. Müller, Margaret-Anne D. Storey · 1993
When moving linear documentation into a hypertext system, it is important to distinguish between referential and structural links; both are needed to model the literary paradigm. In particular, structural links facilitate navigation, tailoring, and information retrieval by imposing structure on large documents. Without them, users face the well-known "lost in hyperspace" syndrome due to disorientation caused by a tangle of referential links in the hypertext web. To be truly effective, hypertext systems should support a level of customization at least equivalent to paper-based documentation systems. The hyperdocument's structure must be malleable and user-customizable. It should be the reader who decides what is the best document architecture -- not the writer. This paper describes a flexible reverse-engineering approach to creating, representing, and structuring online documentation. The approach permits the construction and maintenance of personalized information structures: multiple ...